Saturday, June 17th:

Thirteen hours from nyc to dubai, 6 hour layover in dubai, 5 hours to nairobe, 2 hours to Entebbe and another hour in a matatu (mini bus) later, I finally arrived in Kampala, Uganda with 16 other delirious, sleep-deprived students with Global Youth Partnership with Africa. In the past few days, we’ve seen the best and (almost) the worst in Kampala, which, still, is of the more prosperous and developed southern region of Uganda and quite disconnected from the conflict-ridden north.

The urban Ugandans I’ve met so far are very friendly – clearly this is a high contact culture of greetings, telling the whole story, and relaxing, unlike the US. Every interpersonal contact begins and ends with a greeting and handshake or hug, no matter with the custodian or Minister of Health. People here are also very beautiful – we Americans began feeling ugly in comparison.

To update, I’m halfway through a group immersion/travel experience with GYPA and will be going to Fort Portal and Gulu (where Invisible Children was filmed www.invisiblechildren.org). We met with craft-making women of slum areas, former child solider know working on reintegration of them into society, Minister of Youth and Education, and countless others making change one small step at a time. Yet, I feel that we have been quite sheltered – staying in the nicest dorm of the “Harvard of Africa” (Makerere University) and shuttled around to tourist areas with Ugandans holding our hands. The ignorance and cultural insensitivity of some people in the GYPA bother me, but such must be part of the group learning experience. I really dislike feeling like an American tourist, and further dislike being exploited as one – especially through activities advocated by GYPA. The women’s group from the slum, through GYPA, started an Income Generating Activity: craft making and selling them at American prices to foreigners. One on hand, they are cheap in American terms and I want to lessen the wealth gap, but by charging such ridiculous amounts (10,000 shillings for a necklace = $6, but 3-4 decent restaurant meals) it creates an unsustainable source of income where there MUST be a middle man and a medium to reach foreigners…and the way the women raised prices as they saw our willingness to pay made me feel like an exploited American tourist. The members of my group, after ooing and ahhing about the project, then decided that EVERYONE should chip in 60,000 shillings to by the women 10 sewing machines without consulting everyone. There isn’t room in their workplace for 10 sewing machines, and there are different ways of investing aid money – I would rather invest in infrastructure or education. I guess my message is, while these sums of money are small and we can spend them casually, they mean so much to those around us that it is disrespectful to throw money around and only furthers the wealth and power gap.
Today we visited the slum areas these women are from. Most of the residents are internally displaced people (IDP) from the North forced to move there after losing land and family to the 20-year civil war. There is apparently a lack of unity with a north-south divide, with different cultures, languages, religions (despite English being the national language). There is no running water or sewage system in the slum. It felt like another world – children running around barefoot in trash and dirt, goats and cows sharing roads with humans, but with the bustling spirit of 10,000 living in a cramped area but thankful to have at least that.